1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image reading apparatus and a computer readable medium.
2. Description of Related Art
In an image reading apparatus such as a scanner, etc., an image forming apparatus is known including a function of converting a read image into data (hereinafter referred to as simply “image data”) in a format usable by an external device and transferring the data to the external format. For example, there is an image reading apparatus which uses a network protocol such as FTP (File Transfer Protocol), etc. to transfer image data to the external device (such as a sever, etc.).
The image reading apparatus temporarily stores the image data in the memory and the image data stored in the memory is transmitted to a server. Here, capacity of the memory is limited and it may not be possible to store the whole image data generated in one reading operation as one batch in the memory.
Therefore, there is an image reading apparatus provided with a function to utilize memory capacity effectively. For example, when the image data is composed of a plurality of pages, there is an image forming apparatus including a function which sequentially transmits to the server pages after reading of the image and conversion to data is finished on these pages. In this case, there is also an image reading apparatus including a function which sequentially transmits the data to the server starting from the head portion of the large amount of image data.
In an image reading apparatus where pages converted to data are sequentially sent or data is sequentially sent to the server from the head portion, when reading of the image is paused due to a reason such as paper jam, etc., generation of the image data to be transferred is also paused. When the transfer of image data to the server stops due to the pause of the generation of image data and the transfer of image data is not resumed even after transfer reception waiting time of the server passes, timeout of the transfer processing (hereinafter referred to as simply “timeout”) occurs and communication between the image reading apparatus and the server is cut off. In this case, the image data transmitted until then is destroyed, and image reading and transfer of image data needs to be performed again from the beginning.
Thus, there is a known configuration which sends a command from a device of a sending side to a device of a receiving side at predetermined time intervals in order to prevent timeout (For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-141489).
However, the command sent in the configuration described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-141489 has no relation with the data to be transferred, and the command causes a communication load which has no relation with the transfer of data. Further, a configuration to receive the command needs to be provided in advance in the device of the receiving side, and thus in order to apply the configuration described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2008-141489, the device of the receiving side needs to be reformed in advance.